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By Matthew Hay BrownThe Baltimore Sun • Thursday May 2, 2013 7:14 AM

BALTIMORE — Two senior enlisted leaders with an elite Navy dive unit will face charges of
involuntary manslaughter in the February deaths of two divers at Aberdeen Proving Ground, the Navy
said yesterday.

The chief warrant officer and the senior chief petty officer, whom officials did not name, also
face charges of dereliction of duty in the Feb. 26 deaths of Diver 1st Class James Reyher and Diver
2nd Class Ryan Harris.

Reyher, 28, of Caldwell, Ohio, and Harris, 23, of Gladstone, Mo., members of the elite Mobile
Diving and Salvage Unit 2, died during a training exercise at the UNDEX Test Facility, known as the
super pond.

Rear Adm. Mike Tillotson, commander of the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command, called a
preliminary hearing for May 21 to determine whether the leaders will be court-martialed.

Reyher and Harris were the second and third divers to die at the pond in less than a month.

George H. Lazzaro Jr., a 41-year-old former Marine working as a civilian engineering technician,
died on Jan. 30 while performing routine maintenance in the facility.

Officials said there had been no deaths or serious injuries at the pond until this year.Col.
Gordon A. Graham, commander of the Aberdeen Test Center, suspended operations at the facility after
the deaths of Reyher and Harris.

The unit leaders are to appear before an Article 32 hearing, a military proceeding analogous to
a civilian grand jury. A military judge will hear information and recommend a course of action to
Tillotson.

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service has completed an investigation of the deaths, officials
said. The Navy Expeditionary Combat Command is conducting a separate safety investigation.

The super pond was built in the 1990s to give the Navy a place to conduct underwater explosion
tests that would not harm fish or other aquatic creatures.

The 1,000-foot-long, 150-foot-deep pond, carved out of the bank of the Bush River, can withstand
the equivalent of 4,100 pounds of TNT. It has been used to shock-test ships, submarines, torpedoes,
missiles and other systems. It’s also been used for training exercises.

Both the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command and the Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit 2 are based at
Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story in Virginia Beach, Va.

MDSU 2 conducted salvage operations after the crashes of TWA Flight 800, Swiss Air Flight 111
and the space shuttles Challenger and Columbia; the collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River bridge
in Minnesota; and the discovery of the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor. Members recently recovered a
downed F-16 Fighting Falcon off the coast of Italy.